Muriel McKay's family meet killer to ask for details on where her body is buried
The daughter of murdered Muriel McKay has flown 4,000 miles to the Caribbean to ask her killer for more details of her mother's last moments and where he buried her body.
Dianne McKay met Nizamodeen Hosein in his native Trinidad where he was deported after serving 20 years in a British jail for Muriel's kidnap and murder.
In an emotional meeting Mrs McKay, 84, greeted Hosein warmly, kissing him on both cheeks and saying: "Hello, it's me, Dianne. I came all this way to see you."
Hosein replied: "Thank you, God bless you. It's good to see you," before returning the kiss.
Dianne's son Mark Dyer bounded up to Hosein, shaking his hand vigorously and telling him: "I am so happy to meet you."
Hosein replied with a smile: "I am too" before businessman Mr Dyer took his hand and led him to a sofa for an initial chat in the hotel in the capital Port of Spain.
Hosein was 22 when he and his elder brother Arthur kidnapped Muriel, 55, from her London home in December 1969, and held her for a £1m ransom at their rundown Hertfordshire farm.
She was married to wealthy newspaper executive Alick McKay, deputy to newspaper baron Rupert Murdoch, who had just bought The Sun newspaper.
The bungling brothers had mistaken her for Murdoch's then wife Anna.
Hosein told Muriel McKay's daughter and grandson they realised they had the wrong woman very soon after restraining her and bundling her into their battered Volvo and driving her off.
Read more:
Muriel McKay - the woman who vanished
'You've got to see Nizam as the young man that did the crime'
Mrs McKay and her son spent several hours over two days questioning Hosein in the air-conditioned seafront hotel as temperatures outside climbed to 31C.
She last saw Hosein when she gave evidence against him at his Old Bailey trial in 1970. Her son was six years old when his grandmother was kidnapped.
Mrs McKay said of the emotional meeting: "I think you've got to see Nizam as the young man that did the crime, not this funny old guy. You've got to see through all that. That's the only way I can cope.
"He was young and very much under the influence of his brother who was a horrible person. Nizam hadn't long arrived in Britain and knew no one. He went along with what his brother told him to do."
'That's where the body is'
As she sat beside Hosein, she told him: "We've come, not just to say hello, but to show you photos, we have a lot of photos of the farm before and now. We want you to show us exactly where you put my mother because I would like to take her out and give her the burial she deserves."
Hosein told her what he has said in recent emails and video calls that Muriel collapsed and died as she sat with him watching a TV news report in which her distraught family, including a young Mrs McKay, made appeals for information about her kidnap.
"I panicked," said Hosein, who claimed he later carried her body outside, through a gate and turned left behind a barn towards a fence or hedge. "Two feet from the hedge, that's where the body is."
'I don't need a photograph to remind me'
He pointed to the spot on several blown-up photographs of the farm, today and in 1969, which Mr Dyer had brought with them on the flight from London.
Mr Dyer also showed a large photograph of his grandmother to Hosein, who told him: "I don't need a photograph to remind me."
He had offered to go to the farm to show the family the burial site, but the Home Office refused to lift the deportation order he was given when he was freed from jail in 1990.
The refusal prompted the family's visit to Trinidad, but by the end of the trip Mrs McKay and her son left feeling frustrated that they hadn't learned more detail of how Muriel had spent her last days.
They hope their determination to discover more will help overcome current opposition to an excavation of the farm.
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Family insists police searched wrong place
Scotland Yard detectives searched a large patch over five days two years ago, with the owner's permission, but found nothing.
The family insists they dug in the wrong place and now have a more precise location for Muriel's remains.
The farm's current owner Ian de Burgh Marsh says he has sympathy for the family, but will comply only with police wishes.
Police say at the moment they are not convinced Hosein has said enough to justify them applying for a search warrant.
A killer's apology
Hosein went to jail in 1970 still maintaining his innocence, and keeping secret Muriel's fate, but finally revealed how she died after the McKay family hired a local lawyer to interview him.
As Mrs McKay and Mr Dyer prepared to leave Trinidad, I asked Hosein if he had apologised to the family for the murder.
"To everyone," he replied. "To everyone."
